Rescue squad: Mummy

Mabel and I went to Target this morning and had a pleasant time trying on various purple nail polishes, before not buying any of them. (Don't worry. I kept up my end of the consumer bargain by buying lots of other things.) It was quite sweetly mother-and-daughter, I thought. Though I fall short of being the mother of the only-just-two-year-old at a toddler class last week who was sporting a full, immaculate, pink pedicure under her tiny white open-toed sandals. I think that might be going a hair too far. But whatever floats your boat: in the big book of parenting sins, it's not exactly a mortaler.

We have been to the library several times since it reopened in all its tempting orange-topped-stool glory, and I pretty much have things down now. Before we go in, I go over the rules with them both: no sitting on the twirly stools, no playing on the computers, no running, no shouting. This afternoon we had to pick up a book for me, which meant a quick foray over to the sombre grown-up side of things, but we did that first and got it over with quickly. Then, a few books read, a few picked up, and I was queueing up to check out while they were swirling on the stools, Mabel blatantly playing with the computers.

(At this point I have to decide whether the correct course of action is to stick to my guns and go over there and remove them from the stools - which is pointless because Mabel gets straight back up, and I lose my place in the queue - or just grin and bear it and get through as quickly as I can, hoping that she's not actively breaking anything, and resolve to do better next time. I usually do a bit of the first, and a lot of the second.)

So we left the building, feeling all in all not too bad about how things went, and Mabel immediately went and got herself comprehensively wedged in a bush. There's a wide patch of conifer hedge outside the library windows, about three feet high and maybe the size of two or three ping-pong tables in area. It's dense needley leaf at the front and the top, but quite sparse underneath. As Mabel discovered, when Monkey ran between the hedge and the windows and Mabel followed him and then upped the ante by proceeding right into the middle of the whole thing.

Cue me circling the bush unfrantically, wondering vaguely what I should do now. I sent Monkey after her, much in the manner of Zaphod Beeblebrox sending a second pan-galactic gargle blaster down to check on the first, but I didn't really expect him to come out dragging her behind her by the ear, caveman-style. A young lad with a basketball arrived on the scene, eager to know if a dog was stuck in a tree, or maybe an injured squirrel, and seemed game enough when I tried to send him in after the first two, but then decided he couldn't fit. Mabel claimed to be unperturbed, deep in the foliage, so the first thing really was to get her to want to come out, or else to admit that she had a problem. I told her the boy might let her play with his basketball.

"I can't get out. I'm stuck," came a small voice. An opportunity for drama and pathos was noted and she moved to a quavery wail: "Mummy!"

So there was nothing for it but to swallow my dignity (again) and go in myself. Wondering if we'd have to call the fire brigade after all to cut my baby out of the hedge as if she were an accident victim trapped in a vehicle - only so much more embarrassingly - I ducked under, pushed through the dry sticks, broke off a couple, and pulled her out without undue drama after all.

Of course, then she was all pathetic and I completely forgot to scold her for going in in the first place. No doubt every time we pass the library in the future, she'll recount the day she got stuck in the bush and the boy with the basketball couldn't pull her out.